Fresh Pasta

Fresh pasta in central Italy is made almost exclusively with eggs and flour.

Each chef has his own recipe based on the different proportions between the two ingredients or on the possible use of re-milled semolina flour, which makes tagliatelle, fettuccine or pappardelle rougher and chewier. The yolks are used to obtain a more protein-based dough and therefore better maintain cooking.

Very common then are the fresh stuffed pastas, such as agnolotti, or fresh baked pastas, like cannelloni, which are a typical “Sunday lunch.”

The only famous recipe in Lazio for fresh pasta using only flour and water are the strozzapreti, which means literally priests’ strangle.

Fresh pasta is a typically bourgeois food. The grain has always had a high cost and cooking pasta made its use “inconvenient” to those who worked mainly in the fields.

I have an immoderate passion for pasta made with rolling pin and admire the ability of the “sfogline” to create it. Thanks to their patience and skill, this is one of the foods that has made Italians famous throughout the world.